Litigation

New Disclosure Law In Arizona

By Charlie Hall

The legislative response to Citizens United continues. In Arizona, Gov. Jan Brewer has signed a law requiring that corporations and unions disclose any significant election expenditures. According to a story in the Arizona Capitol Times:

The bill, H2788, requires corporations and labor unions to file campaign finance reports with the Arizona Secretary of State?s Office within one day of spending an aggregate of $5,000 on a statewide race, $2,500 in a legislative race and $1,000 in a local or county race. The legislation was prompted the U.S. Supreme Court?s January ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, which lifted a decades-old ban on direct election spending by corporations and labor unions. …

Arizona was one of 23 states that prohibited such spending prior to the Citizens United ruling. The bill passed 55-0 in the House and 30-0 in the Senate.

In recent weeks, a Wisconsin ethics board proposed a tough new disclosure standard for independent expenditures, while West Virginia, which recently passed a public-financing program for its 2012 Supreme Court elections, also enacted a new financial law governing election expenditures. And Iowa’s Senate has approved a similar bill. To learn more about these efforts, see earlier Gavel Grab stories about disclosure laws.

Full post as published by The Gavel on April 02, 2010 (boomark / email).